Craig,That's pretty interesting. It looks like your model explained a good chunk of the variation in baking time just with temperature alone. Good work. Given the wealth of data on this forum, I am really surprised that someone has been after something like this sooner. Now if only there was regression model to predict oven spring I think the pizza world would be nearly mastered. Jim

« Last Edit: December 06, 2011, 04:24:52 PM by JimmyG »

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Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

scott123

Now, I'm oversimplifying a lot here. I'm sure that the data patterns are nowhere near this cut and dry. Most likely the trendlines are curved, although I don't think they're as curved as the line you came up with.

The yellow area covers all the way from 3/4" steel to 1/4" quarry tiles.

If you look at the vast amount of play between materials, material thickness and temperatures, you'll see why it bothers me a bit when people talk temps. I'm in no way saying this is you, but beginners have a tendency to fall under the assumption that if another member bakes their pizza at 550, they can make the same pizza at 550. Which is why I try to get people to focus as much as possible on bake times. There's nothing relative about bake times. 5 minutes for Joe is 5 minutes for Larry. Sure, there might be subjectivity in how much color/char Joe or Larry prefers, but it's not like Joe is trying to achieve a 5 minute bake with quarry tiles at 550 because Larry is getting a 5 minute bake at 550 with steel. John Q Neapolitan Pizzamaker may not have the insulation that you have under your hearth (or may have more), but if he can tweak his temps to match your 60 second bake, he can make your pizza (along with, of course, matching your dough and everything else).

I'm sure you're getting something from this data, but, for me personally, if I could get 10 people with the same stone (composition and thickness) baking for different times at different temps, that data would be invaluable.

Now, I'm oversimplifying a lot here. I'm sure that the data patterns are nowhere near this cut and dry. Most likely the trendlines are curved, although I don't think they're as curved as the line you came up with..

Scott, you might be right. I think it would be very interesting to find out. I'm not trying to come up with a time-temp rule or anything like that. My objective is two fold: 1) personal intellectual curiosity about a number of things, and 2) I'm trying to help my kids come up with science fair ideas for next year that are interesting, unique, and have real practical value. I don't let my boys do BS projects. I think there is some real promise and multiple great projects here along the lines you commented on in your last couple posts. As you said, there is information we don't have that would be invaluable.

scott123

I don't know how deep you want to get into this, but instead of just looking at thickness, material and temp, and how those relate to bake times, you could drill down on the material and get density and specific heat capacity, as well as specific heat capacity per volume.

I've posted this before, so I'm sure you've seen it, but just in case you missed it, this is where I picked up a good deal of my initial knowledge of heat transfer in cooking materials:

Also, in On Food and Cooking, I believe Harold McGee has a rough equation for predicting the time it takes for heat to penetrate meat. You might be able to take that and somehow apply it to dough. Or the kids could make burgers and pull all this data together to predict when the center of the hamburger will be done using cooking implements of varying materials and thicknesses.